Brenda Niall

Biography

Brenda Niall is a distinguished biographer, literary critic and journalist. She was appointed as a teaching fellow in the English Department at Monash University in 1964 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1975 and Reader in 1994. She has held visiting fellowships at Michigan and Yale Universities. She was American Council of Learned Societies Visiting Research Fellow in 1975 and Visiting Scholar, Humanities Research Centre at the ANU in 1983 and 1987. She retired from her position as Reader in English Literature at Monash University in 1995. Her research interests are in the fields of Australian Literature, Australian History, and American Literature (in particular Edith Wharton). In 2004 she was made an Officer of the Order of Australia to acknowledge her services to Australian Literature. In October 2005 Monash University awarded her the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters. She was awarded the National Biography Prize in 2016 for her biography of Daniel Mannix.